Pensions: "Nothing has been clearly explained", laments Bayrou

April 29, 2023

François Bayrou estimated on Saturday that “nothing has been clearly explained” in the pension reform, the government having, according to him, “let itself be caught in a trap”, for lack of having carried “the debate on the inevitable rebalancing of the system”, in an interview with the JDD.

“The debate with the country the inevitable rebalancing of the pension system did not take place, there is the source of all the difficulties”, considers the boss of the Modem, explaining “not to be able to understand why we accepted without react that we accredit in the minds of the French the idea that our pension system was today balanced”.

Faced with “the joke” of the discourse of the oppositions who dispute the need for refinancing the system – according to him “misguided minds” -, the historical ally of Emmanuel Macron deplores in particular that “the government has not presented to the French” the “national accounting figures”: “Why? To spare the social partners? For the sake of reassuring Brussels? Or out of conformity of thought?”

“It is our very conception of democracy that is at stake”, continues the unsuccessful three-time presidential candidate, castigating the idea of ??”believing that once elected, it is the leaders who decide on their own, and that the base will have to follow, obey or resign itself to a decision made above it”.

“No major reform can be carried out if we have not carried the requirement of total information and shared awareness”, argues Mr. Bayrou, considering that “fractures, resistance and reluctance” come “when the organization of power is reduced to a confrontation between a summit which does not say who it is and what it wants and a base which is only asked to obey”.

However, according to him, “the mechanisms of control of power from above, the eternal return of the same elements of language, of the same technocratic reflexes have hindered the mission of reinventing the relationship between the base and the so-called summit”.

On the merits, the High Commissioner for Planning believes that “a much more complete plan to return to balance over ten or twelve years would have been needed, with efforts required not only from employees, but also from other categories of the population”, expressing his “suffering” that the “reformists” – targeting on the one hand the CFDT, CFTC, CGC and “large sections of FO”, on the other hand the executive – “n’ fail to find common working methods”.

“There are responsibilities on both sides,” he judges, pointing to the “stiff approach” of the CFDT “and, on the executive side, the fear of being bullied after making concessions”.